Black women in and beyond Belgian mainstream media : between opinion–making, dissidence, and marronage

This article focuses on Black women in and beyond Belgian mainstream media. It discusses media practices and interventions by Black women in Belgium and examines the discourses that Black women use when engaging with the topics of coloniality, racism, and blackness. Drawing from semi-structured interviews (N = 20) with Black women in Belgium, this article provides insight into who speaks, what is spoken about, and who is spoken to in Black women’s media discourses. In doing so, three frames of engagement are distinguished: opinion-making, dissidence, and marronage. Data shows that Black women are positioned and framed in public debate by media institutions to perform a proximity to radical Black activism. Additionally, Black women’s anti-racist discourses and strategies diverge in ways that creates tensions in the way they reflect on their (sense of) agency in regard to media institutions. Moreover, Belgium’s colonial legacy influences the media landscape and public engagement in the French- and Dutch-speaking regions of Belgium in different ways. Where Dutch-speaking Belgium positions itself as progressive by including Black “radical” voices, French-speaking Belgium averts critical Black voices in mainstream media and public debate which, in turn, leads to innovative, radical, grass-roots mobilizations among Black women in and beyond digital media